Stop Calling Them Sluts

Nuts and sluts, bitches and whores: That’s the gauntlet conservative women must run to compete for the “honor” of political office today.

While every campaign season is deemed more vicious than those that came before, the attacks this time around have reached a new low. Rather than debate ideas and policies, weak-minded opponents of strong-willed women resort to sexualized attacks—a cover to compensate for their own inadequacies.

Those who hoot and holler, cheering from the sidelines, and those who enable the abuse with their silent acceptance, are as complicit in the rape of reputation as those who spew the vitriol.